THEN
In the week following Ron’s funeral, Harry spent his days alternating between grief so profound it felt like he might drown in it and spells of intense productivity. Even at his most effective, however, he found that he couldn’t focus on any of the things that actually required his attention. He needed to finalize his applications for specialty training, for example, which were due at the end of the month; but every time he sat down to look at the form, he’d be reminded of the hospital and how the last time he was there, he watched his best friend die.
So instead of focusing on that, he poured his energy into other things. And his favorite of those other things turned out to be writing Ginny.
Letters flew between their flats at a breakneck pace, exhausting their owls, for two days before he felt compelled to invite her round. Fancy doing this in person? I’m home all day — come by whenever. H.
It’s not like Ginny had anywhere to be, either. Similar to how Harry was excused from the remainder of his trauma rotation and had a few weeks before he returned to school, Ginny was on bereavement leave from work. That hadn’t been her choice: had they given her one, she would have chosen to return the day after the funeral. To Ginny, reporting on quidditch games would have been a very welcome distraction from that which was haunting her; she’d have liked nothing more than to throw herself into it. But her editor had insisted that she needed time, and the publisher of the paper — a grandfatherly widower named Orpheus, who understood grief all too well following the loss of his wife three years prior — agreed to pay her full wage for six weeks while she found ways to cope. So that particular option had been taken away from her.
When Harry’s letter arrived, inviting her over, it was the first real escape she’d been offered since Ron died. She was always welcome at the Burrow, of course, but her mother’s suffocating melancholy and her father’s stoic sadness were hardly helpful for her already fragile mental state. Writing Harry had been nice for her — an activity that provided a productive outlet for her mourning, if not the mindless distraction from it that she actually craved — and the opportunity to get out of the four walls of her Shoreditch studio was far too good for her to pass up.
She hadn’t been at Harry’s flat since the night of Ron’s accident, when they’d shared his guest bed rather than be alone with their own thoughts. As such, she worried as she got ready to meet him there that their evening together might be more awkward than it was comforting or — Merlin forbid — enjoyable. So, though she was eager to see Harry — confusingly so, truth be told — she still had to talk herself into leaving her flat for his.
Harry’s last letter to her reminded her that she was added to his wards. The thing was that this was only useful if she had floo access, and her current flat didn’t have a fireplace to connect to the network. It would be rude to apparate into someone else’s home, so instead she chose a discrete alley a few blocks north of Harry’s building and walked over. Although she was running late already, she decided she felt awkward arriving empty-handed when she was across the street and popped into the Sainsbury’s up the road to purchase a bottle of wine and a random assortment of candy bars and crisps. Out of things she could reasonably get for Harry within a block and a half radius of his building, she was left with no choice but to ring up to his flat.
Harry waited for her as she exited the lift, door ajar with a tired half smile on his thin lips. He was wearing a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt emblazoned with the crest of the Royal Academy of Magical Healing across the front, his hair wet and flatter than it would ever appear were it dry. She tugged self-consciously at her jacket, under which she wore a nice blouse with her jeans. To her, hanging out with Harry presented an opportunity to wear real clothes, but seeing him so casual made her wish she’d just come over in a bulky Weasley jumper instead. Still, it wasn’t like she could change.
“So formal, Ginevra,” Harry teased lightly, though his voice sounded rough and hoarse. “Coming through the front door.”
“Well, Henry,” she scoffed, though she was even then absolutely aware that Harry’s legal name is just, in fact, Harry, “some people still have decorum, you know.”
“Ginny Weasley? Decorum?” Harry forced a laugh. “One of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard, truly.”
“All right,” Ginny rolled her eyes, surprised at how easily the banter came to her. She and Harry had always had an easy rapport, but given the current situation, it almost felt out of place. And maybe that was why falling into it felt so good. “I'm not the one who got drunk at Slughorn’s Christmas Party in 1997 and declared it was ‘a fucking furnace’ before shedding my outer robes and attempting to remove my shirt. In front of my own mum. That, Harry James, was you.”
Harry held up his hands in surrender, a smile just beginning to reach his eyes as he invited her in and closed the door behind them. “Honestly, it’s incredible that he didn’t revoke the recommendation he wrote me for the Academy after I pulled that.” He paused, cleared his throat. “Er, I can take your jacket?”
She smiled nervously as she unbuttoned the light layer she wore on top of her blouse. “Sure,” she agreed, shimmying out of the garment and then delivering it to Harry’s waiting arms. She handed him the bag from Sainsbury’s as well. “
“Wow,” Harry nodded, taking in her appearance. “You do have decorum. Making me look like a right slob in my own home.”
“I haven’t worn anything but pajamas since the funeral,” Ginny admitted, conscious that she was breaking the banter with the tragic and true reason they found themselves hanging out that day. “Seemed as good a reason as any to remind myself I still own real clothes.”
“Er, yeah,” Harry cleared his throat uncomfortably once more. “Fair enough.”
There was an awkward pause, and it occurred to each of them that perhaps they’d gone into too much detail in their letters. Harry would ask Ginny what she’s been up to, but they’d already covered that. Ginny would ask after Harry’s family — a neutral subject, because his family was still intact — but she’d done that in a letter, too.
“Do you want something to drink?” Harry asked finally. “I’ve got water and butterbeer?” She raised an eyebrow in response. “We could also open this wine,” he corrected, gesturing to the bottle she brought. He’d completely forgotten he was holding it.
“That’ll do,” Ginny laughed tiredly.
“I don’t have wine glasses,” he admitted sheepishly. Ginny didn’t think he had any reason to be embarrassed — most men in their early twenties don’t own wine glasses, especially not single students. “Do you mind drinking out of a mug?”
“No. Although I admit I’m curious about what you’d do if I said I do mind.”
“Try to transfigure a mug into a proper wine glass, probably,” Harry shrugged. “Haven’t done it in years, but I am James Potter’s son.”
Ginny nodded, though she didn’t fully understand what one thing had to do with the other. She’d known the Potters for more than half of her life and had spent quite a bit of time with James in particular — was he especially good at transfiguration? She didn’t know. It had never come up.
She busied herself with being helpful, making room for the mugs on Harry’s table. The whole thing was littered with papers, almost as though he dropped a stack so that it scattered in every direction, overtaking every surface. She glanced at the papers, hoping to stack them in a way that made some sort of sense. A few sheets were clearly notes, so Ginny stacked them in one pile; there were another few still that appeared to be the paperwork excusing him from the rest of trauma, so those went into a stack for documents. But the third grouping of papers, Ginny didn’t know what to make of.
“What are these?” She asked, as Harry returned to the table with two mugs of red wine.
He glanced at the papers in her hand as he set one of the mugs in front of her and grimaced. “Specialty applications,” he answered, sounding clipped.
Ginny studied the forms again, her brow furrowed. They looked complicated, with prompts asking him to qualify his interest in every “programme” he’s applying to, and a question asking if he’s prioritizing location or specialty on his rankings. A second form instructed him to rank each “programme” he’s applying to.
“How does this work?” She asked after studying it for a few minutes and finding herself unable to discern the actual process with which it assists.
Harry gestured for her to sit in front of her mug as he took the seat next to her. “May I?” He asked, fingers hovering ever so lightly above the supposed application in question.
“Please.” Ginny gingerly handed the stack of forms back to him and sat up straighter, narrowing her eyes intently.
“All right, so when you’re applying to specialties, what you’re really applying to is a programme, right?” Harry looked over to ensure she was following; she gave a prim nod to affirm she was. “And what a programme is, essentially, is a combination of a location and specialty. So, for example, Dark Arts at St. Mungo’s is a programme. Are you following?”
Ginny wrinkled her freckled nose, confused. “They aren’t all at St. Mungo’s?” She knew there were other hospitals around the UK, of course. There was one in Scotland that Hogwarts sometimes escalated cases to, one in Wales where she was brought after her career-ending injury, and probably others. But, given that St. Mungo’s was the flagship, it never occurred to her that Healers would train anywhere else.
Harry shook his head. “Nope. Most magical hospitals in the UK have at least a handful of them, although St. Mungo’s is one of the few that houses every specialty. If you want something very specialized, you can even do further training on the continent or in North America, if it’s not offered here.” He paused, took a deep breath. “Anyway, some programmes are more competitive than others. Like, in my class, there are a lot of students interested in witches’ health, so they think that all of the available spots for training in witches’ health will fill up quickly. And that means that some people won’t make the cut. So, for example, if you’re set on doing witches’ health, but your scores are a bit below the others, you might try telling a less desirable programme — like one in Wales — that your dream is to train there, so that you’ll maybe get an edge over someone else. Or, you may say: well, I’m going to apply to two specialties. That way, if witches’ health doesn’t work out, you can still go into, say, A&E. Is this all making sense so far?”
Ginny nodded, her brow still furrowed in thought. “Yes, although…what happens if you also don’t get accepted to an A&E programme, then?”
“Er,” Harry swallowed, distaste written across his face. “You could try to convince a programme with extra spots to let you in. Or, basically, you can go into general healing. There’s a, er, fallback programme to refine your skills for that. Of course, some people want to do that, and someone’s got to but…not very popular.”
“I imagine,” Ginny replied mildly. It sounded like the idea of becoming a reporter after her quidditch dreams were dashed, if not the reality of how it actually ended up. She could perfectly imagine the disappointment and feeling of failure that might come with that.
“Of course, my scores are great,” Harry’s voice took on a confident-bordering-on-arrogant tone, although not an unpleasant one. “I’m, therefore, competitive for most specialties. But some students care far more about the location, because they have two or three or five specialties they’d be equally happy in, but they only want to live in London. So those people might apply to many programmes at St. Mungo’s and the smaller specialized hospitals and clinics, in the hopes that one will take them. And they might prefer, say, witches’ health in London, but they’d rather do pediatrics in London than witches’ health in Wales.”
“Ergo, are you prioritizing location or specialty?” Ginny guesses, an eyebrow raised.
“Correct.”
“So,” Ginny turned ever so slightly to lock eyes with Harry. “Which are you?”
“Well,” Harry sighed deeply, looking confused and forlorn. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”
“Oh?” Ginny implored. “I assumed it was more or less rhetorical. Harry Potter has always wanted to be a Dark Arts Healer. Have you not?”
“I have,” Harry agreed. “And I’d be a shoe-in for the programme at St. Mungo’s, so if I wanted to, I’d get my top choice of location and specialty.”
“So why don’t you?”
Harry bit his lip, flicked his eyes upward to the sky, and blinked rapidly. Silence hung heavily for a few minutes, and Ginny could tell he was trying to find the words — the precise words — to express himself. Harry could be impulsive, but language was something with which he tended to be quite careful. “I’m not sure I want to do dark arts anymore,” he admitted quietly. She didn’t respond; she just focused her sympathetic brown eyes on him, waiting patiently for him to expand.
“Most of the breakthroughs in dark arts healing have already happened,” Harry continued. “And while new curses are often made, they are just as often similar enough that the treatment is based on the treatment for a different curse. There’s a lot of interesting magic you work with, very complex cases, but there’s no real room for innovation. You can help a lot of people but…” He trailed off, looked back toward the ceiling.
“But…?”
“But if the cures are already established, the mysteries are already solved, the impact is narrow. You can help one person’s life at a time, but you can’t make advancements that will save lives for years to come.”
It all clicked for Ginny then. “This is about Ron, isn’t it?”
Harry laughed humorlessly. “Of course it’s bloody about him. I mean…so many people — magical and muggle — die from injuries like his, and it’s because we’re too focused on treating symptoms until it’s too late to treat the problem. Brains are poorly understood, and that’s in part because they’re almost magical in their own right. But with the right motivation, I know we can figure out cures for injuries of the brain that work as surely as the cures for dark arts injuries do. There just aren’t enough people doing it.”
Ginny nodded, processing. It was almost inspiring to hear him so energized; it made her feel exhilarated in a way she couldn’t quite explain with words. “So…cerebral, then?”
“Maybe,” Harry admitted. “But it is probably mad to change this close to the deadline. I’ve spent my entire time in school — like, since Hogwarts, not just at the Academy — working toward dark arts. My CV, my essays, all of my evaluations…they speak about my passion for that. And cerebral is really selective, even though it’s rarely competitive. They don’t have enough healers in cerebral, but they can’t afford to accept anyone but the best and most dedicated, given the organ they treat. My scores are great, but they want more than that. They want passion. And this last minute shift doesn’t really demonstrate to them that I have that.”
Her head tilted to the side, Ginny stared at him quizzically. Although she barely understood the process of applying to specialties, even after Harry’s explanation, the answer to that felt obvious. “I mean…couldn’t you just revise your essays then? Talk about…” She swallowed the lump in her throat that presented itself quite unexpectedly at just the thought of her brother’s name, and what use his memory might be for Harry professionally. “Tell them about Ron.”
Harry nodded in a way that told her he’d already considered that. “That would take care of part of it. But there are other parts of the application, too. You have to include everything that qualifies you to pursue the specialty. Evaluations from relevant rotations, research, recommendations from practicing supervising healers…” He bit his lip. “I did the required cerebral rotation, but other than that, trauma was the only relevant elective I did, and I didn’t even finish it. I haven’t done any relevant research, which I hear cerebral really values in an applicant. And…well, I’m sure my mum knows some healers who would help me out with a recommendation if I asked her to network on my behalf but…I don’t want to get in because of my mum, you know? I want to earn it.”
Ginny nodded pensively. “Admirable,” she affirmed carefully. “But if you want to go for it, is there really any harm in asking for one more favor? If you’re going to give it your all?” She paused, studying his face. “You would give it your all, wouldn’t you? If they took a chance on you?”
“My all and more. Anything I needed to do to help people,” he agreed solemnly. But there was still a palpable hesitation in his voice. “I am worried, though. I’ve never fancied general healing at all. If I didn’t get into cerebral…”
But to Ginny, that too felt like an excuse. “You just spent many minutes explaining to me how people hedge their bets with multiple specialties. Why can’t you do the same? Apply to dark arts, too. You spent your life up until now wanting to do that; I can’t imagine you’d be too disappointed having it to fall back on.”
“You’re right.” Despite his agreement, he shook his head as if he was trying to physically shake off his own doubts. “And doing dark arts doesn’t even preclude me from doing subspecialty training in the dark arts and the brain,” he admitted. “I might not have as good a shot at the St. Mungo’s programme, though. If they assume they’re a fallback.”
Ginny rolled her eyes. “First of all, they’d see your essay right? Address that, too. How your newfound passion for the brain would also translate well to…combining the two disciplines, however you said that. And, anyway, what’s the worst case scenario? You end up in Scotland or Wales for a few years? You could still live in London, if you wanted. I commuted to Holyhead from London when I played.”
A grin slowly washed over Harry’s face, and his eyes shone brightly; she blushed under his beaming, although the reaction didn’t make much sense to her. “You’re right.” This time, he sounded far more confident. “Holy shit, Gin. I’m going to do it.” His sudden enthusiasm and light felt contagious. Though Ginny had scarcely smiled in weeks, she found herself unable to repress a grin like the one he wore on his face.
“‘Course you are! You’re Harry-bloody-Potter! If anyone can pull it off, it’s you.” And she believed that. He’d always managed to pull off impossible feats, often when it looked like he was about to fail. His knack for success was almost pathological, whether it was catching the snitch a millisecond before the opposing team scored the goal that would make it irrelevant or passing his healer school entrance exams after spending the weekend before partying rather than studying. Things just always seemed to work out for Harry, and while this quality would be decidedly vexing on anyone else, on him it was endearing. It was impossible to not want him to succeed in all endeavors.
It was especially easy to root for Harry now, when the goal he decided to chase was one that would honor a person they both loved dearly and lost too soon. Maybe if he managed to accomplish this — and all the goals that were sure to come after it — Ron’s death might actually mean something. Because if anyone could choose a new specialty at that the last minute, it would be Harry Potter; more saliently, if anyone could stop others from suffering the same fate as her brother, it could only be Harry.
…
When Harry was explaining the specialty application process to her, Ginny thought it sounded it it took for-bloody-ever. In actuality, though, the process was rather quick. A couple of weeks after she helped him submit his application — even reading over his essay for him, and providing some necessary copy edits — he casually invited her to come with him to find out what he’d be specializing in and where he’d be training.
“It’s a whole thing,” he explained to her bashfully over drinks at a posh muggle bar in Chelsea. He knew how strange the traditions of The Academy could sound to outsiders, and it was often easier to simply not explain them. And yet, he felt a sort of pull, a strong intuition that he needed Ginny to be there for this ceremony. He reasoned it was because she helped him summon the courage he needed to finish the application in the first place; to interrogate it further would beg questions he didn’t want to answer. Questions like: did he want her there because Ron would have been there if the last few months had played out differently? Did he want her there because seeing her face or her handwriting had become the bright point of his day ever since? “You invite friends and family, and they have a party, and then the owls rush in and you find out.”
“Friends and family, eh?” Ginny cocked an eyebrow, genuinely curious as to how a couple of weeks of hanging out qualified her to be among the select group of people who joined this momentous occasion. The only thing that made sense to her was that maybe it wasn’t a select group. “So aside from me, who’s invited?”
“Er, my parents and Phoebe. Obviously.”
“Obviously,” Ginny agreed with a giggle.
“And then Sirius, of course. Hermione,” he adds quickly. “And you. If you accept, that is.”
Knowing that she was invited alongside Harry’s closest family members and remaining best friend made her chest feel tight with anxiety and warm with affection all at once. Work would no doubt still be treating her with kid gloves by then and she could easily take the day off, so she had no reason to say no. And, besides, she didn’t want to. Just as Harry felt a pull to keep her close, she felt a desperate need to make sure she didn’t lose him. “It would be my honor , Harry,” she told him, her palm flat over the place where her heart clenched beneath her breastbone.
Which is how she ended up in a reception room at The Royal Academy of Magical Healing two weeks later. Before that point, The Academy was sort of a mythical place to her — the place where Harry’d been more or less sequestered away for the last four years. She’d imagined its location to be grand, and probably disguised from muggle view in a particularly noteworthy way.
In reality, it was a rather ordinary building that might reasonably be described as an annex of St. Mungo’s. She entered through the hospital, in fact, before being given directions to the Academy. Once there, she checked in with a second guard, who directed her to a bright space on the top floor.
The room was decorated for the occasion with congratulatory banners and pennants with strange symbols on them. The students learning of their fates today seemed to be conspicuously absent thus far, and only their well-dressed guests appeared to be milling around. Self-consciously she glanced down at the sundress she wore — pale blue with yellow and white flowers — and wondered if she was dressed nicely enough. There was an even mix between business-type robes and dressier muggle clothing, but after spotting a few more sundresses, she figured she was in the clear.
“Ginny!” A familiar voice called to her, and she looked over to see James Potter grinning and waving at her. Harry’s father looked smart in the muggle clothes he tended to favor, despite his wizarding upbringing: pressed chinos and a short sleeved collared shirt with piping. He was standing with Lily — who had, by the looks of things, popped over from a shift at St. Mungo’s in her matching healer set — and Phoebe.
Ginny walked over to join them, letting herself be engulfed in a tight hug by James, then by Lily, and then again by Phoebe. Ginny marveled over how much Phoebe had grown; now ten years old, Harry’s baby sister no longer had to loop her arms around Ginny’s legs or stomach to hug her. Instead, she was able to squeeze Ginny around the chest and, soon, she’d likely be able to hug her around the shoulders instead. It was strange because it felt like just days ago that Harry was telling her and Ron his mum was having a baby, and now that baby was growing taller and taller.
“Hermione’s not here yet, and Sirius is just in the loo,” James explained after a round of rushed introductions. “But actually, it’s good that it’s just us now. Lily and I just wanted to thank you for being such a good friend to Harry these last couple of months,” he said quickly, glancing over to his wife and then toward the entrance, as though he was trying to finish before his best friend could return to tease James for his sentimentality.
“Of course,” Ginny nodded, forcing a smile but truthfully feeling rather awkward. She didn’t feel she’d done anything extraordinary, given the circumstances. “He’s been a great friend to me as well and, besides, it’s nothing…”
“Ginny,” Lily jumped in, tone sympathetic. She placed a light, gentle hand on Ginny’s shoulder, and then moved it upward to tuck a stray strand of ginger hair behind the younger woman’s ear. It was a more motherly gesture than Ginny had received from her own mother in years. “We’re glad to hear our son has been a good friend to you as well, but you don’t have to pretend that providing support to someone else while you’re hurting too hasn’t cost you anything. And we just want you to know that we’ve seen it and we appreciate it more than you know. We don’t think we’d even have gotten here today if you hadn’t been there for him. He told us how you encouraged him, and to be honest, I was close to begging the dean to let him enter training with the next class,” she confided.
Ginny nodded, swallowing the lump that was forming in the back of her throat. “Well, I’m glad I’ve made that much of a difference,” she stated honestly. “But on the contrary, I don’t think it’s cost me anything. It’s, er, nice. At least, as nice as grief can be. Talking to someone else who understands and can, er, look back on the same sort of, er, characterization of Ron as me. And a lot of the same memories, because we were all at school together. So, really, he’s helping me just as much as I’ve helped him.”
Lily and James nodded solemnly, understandingly. They both always had a way of making you feel as though they could empathize completely with what you were saying, without saying anything at all.
“Are you quite sure, Ginny?” Phoebe asked, reminding everyone that she was, in fact, still there. “Because Harry can be really whiny. One time, he was sick and —”
“Harry can be really whiny,” another voice boomed from behind them. It could only be one person. Sirius joined their little circle jovially, always prepared with a quip. “I think it’s because his Mercury is in Cancer, in combination with the ego and attention seeking of a July Leo,” he adds with a wink and a twinkle of mischief.
“Sirius, I swear to Merlin, if you bring up the astrology of my children one more time…” Lily retorted with equal parts boredom and annoyance, and it was clear this exchange had happened many times before.
“It’s a science, Lily,” Sirius raised an eyebrow.
“It’s no more than a superstition, Sirius,” Lily shot back. “Like all divination practices, there’s no way to prove that anything shown by the stars is more than just coincidence.”
“The astrology debate again?” It's a new voice to the conversation, but one all too recognizable. In all the commotion of the heated discussion, they hadn’t even noticed the students entering the room. Harry joined their circle with a stealth she didn’t realize he possessed.
Before she could think better of it, Ginny launched herself into his arms. Deftly, he caught her and they squeezed each other tightly for long enough that Sirius and James exchanged raised eyebrows and a self-satisfied smile formed on Lily’s face. They were, Harry would learn in time, wondering how long the two of them had been romantically involved. But it would still be a while before they became entangled in that way; as always, it was just obvious to everyone else before it occurred to them.
“I’m so glad you came,” Harry said to Ginny as he pulled away. His eyes were bright and excited as he said it.
She grinned in return. “Where else would I be?” She asked brightly. After all, when your friend asks you to be at something important to them, you show up.
“Dunno,” Harry winked at her. “Just waiting on Hermione, then?” He flicked his eyes away from Ginny briefly, surveying the group, before his gaze once again landed on her.
“Yes, but I’m sure she’ll be here shortly,” Lily responded brightly. Still, her expression was forced, and what went unsaid hung heavily in the air: it was very unlike Hermione to be late.
Ginny, who hadn’t really heard from Hermione since Ron’s funeral — despite repeated attempts to reach out — just trained a neutral expression on her face.
“Well, the ceremony won’t start for twenty minutes or so, so we’ve got time,” Harry responded, a bit of anxiety creeping into his speech. “In the meantime, they’re, er, putting out some refreshments. Anyone thirsty?”
As the group hummed that they were fine, Ginny observed that Harry looked like he needed to move around. And so, she volunteered: “I could use something to drink, actually. Want to accompany me?”
Harry nodded eagerly, trying not to notice the knowing looks his parents and godfather seemed to be sending each other. He was nervous enough without trying to unpack that.
“I don’t actually need a drink,” Ginny commented to him once they were out of earshot. “I mean I’m happy to have one, but really, it just looked like you needed to pace.” She had always known that about Harry, his tendency to pace when he was nervous; she could think of at least five things that might be contributing to his anxiety at the moment, although it hadn’t yet occurred to her that she might be one of them.
Harry chuckled humorlessly. “There’s a lot resting on today,” he responded as a means of explanation. “And I told Hermione she didn’t have to come if she wasn’t up to it — she’s understandably not up to much, lately — but she swore up and down that nothing could keep her from being here for acceptance day.”
“So she’s a little late,” Ginny shrugged, trying to sound nonchalant although she, too, was concerned. “She’s not herself these days. If she said she wouldn’t miss it, she won’t.”
He didn’t even bother attempting a smile. “Well, thank you for being here, anyway.”
“You already thanked me,” she reminded him. “And it’s unnecessary. Thank you for inviting me.”
“It’s just…” He hesitated, looking at her with such a nakedly sincere expression it made her breath catch. “It means a lot, that’s all,” he finished finally, clearly not being completely forthright with whatever was on his mind.
Still, she wasn’t going to press him. He had enough on his mind without having to express whatever guilt-stricken thought was on the tip of his tongue. Instead, she changed the subject. “Those pennants,” she said, gesturing around the room. “What’s that about?”
“Oh,” Harry let out a surprised chuckle. “Each pennant represents a specialty. So the wand and bone crossed is musculoskeletal. The wand with the swirls coming out of it right there? The swirls are shaped like the brain, so that cerebral. Once you open your letter, your name generates on the pennant of your chosen specialty, along with the programme you’ll be training at.” He pauses. “It’s a clever bit of magic, but can be really embarrassing. If you don’t get your top choice or something.”
Something like I can imagine is about to escape Ginny’s lips when a booming, amplified voice interrupts them. “Please finish your refreshments and find your group. The ceremony will begin in five minutes.”
They return to Harry’s family, dismayed to find Hermione still hasn’t arrived. It’s only when they’re counting down to opening the windows, allowing the owls carrying the placements to fly in, that Hermione tiptoes over to join their group.
As an apology for her tardiness, Hermione offered an embarrassed smile to the rest of them. Though Harry was much too distracted to notice she'd even arrived, one look at her told Ginny that all would be forgiven immediately. Her skin was sallow, so pale so as to be grey, and her eyes were lined in purple-black circles. Her frame was gaunt, as though she hadn’t eaten since Ron’s funeral. The effort it took for her to be there at all must have been considerable.
The flurry of owls entering the room pulled Ginny forcefully from her reverie, as everyone watched the creatures gracefully swooped to deliver letters to the waiting future healers. The anxiety filling the space was palpable; many students fumbled the thick envelopes as theirs arrived.
But not Harry. With his finely-honed seeker’s dexterity, he reached up his hand and plucked the envelope that bore his name from midair. He took a deep breath, the kind he’d instructed Ginny to take the night of Ron’s accident: three counts in, three counts hold, three counts out. His long fingers retrieved the fine parchment. Another deep breath. And then, he read.
For a moment, all the breath left their little circle as Harry scanned the letter with a blank expression. And then, relief covered his face.
“Well?” James Potter prodded his son insistently, never one for patience.
Finally, Harry grinned widely. “Cerebral at St. Mungo’s!”
Harry J. Potter - St. Mungo’s. The text populated itself in on the banner he’d pointed out to Ginny. It was the only appointment to cerebral training received that day.